A select few of us (and the entire riceboy population of Concord) were
invited to a special VIP screening of the fantastic new Universal Picture
"The Fast and the Furious" starring... well, I can't remember but it's
nobody you've heard of (though the lead actor was on BayTV last night and
apparently he was in Boiler Room and a bunch of other movies).
I think what summed it up was the hypsters from CMC and Z95.7 failing to
excite the crowd with the well thought out joke: "And one more announcement,
the lowered Civic in the parking garage you left your lights on."
Now on with the show...
The premise: New kid street racer shows up in lime green Eclipse to battle
big bad Dominic in his RX-7. There's a real story line in there, but I
won't spoil the surprise (it's not that big, and it's revealed about 15
minutes into the movie). There's been some truck hijacking going on (for
those expensive Panasonic DVD players and VCRs) and the cops suspect it's
the rowdy band of LA street racers (or SM participants) :)
The good: The cars are awesome, and they're accurate. The movie actually
does a good job of letting in the technical details (cars do have
programmable ignition and fuel injection) because their audience knows it
and wants the realism. The story is slightly more engaging than I was
expecting, and the race scenes and driving are way more exciting that I
was expecting to see.
The bad: It's Hollywood. I started keeping track of innacuracies and/or
non-realistic things, but stopped at 23 or 24... about 15 minutes into
the movie. They do good, like admitting that injecting nitrous into the
manifold for long periouds of time, but then do bad by insinuating that
the manifold is a chunk of the passenger floorboard that can come flying
of and make sparks for miles while the engine continues on happily.
The ugly: Well, all the main characters are ugly, and I think a lot of
the crowd was surprised when they first stepped out of their cars -- "Is
that what Hollywood thinks we look like?".
Compared to Driven: For humor value, you just can't beat a Stallone
delivery of crappy writing. Fortunately there's no big dramatic
proclamations said in the sincerest drawl in this movie. But the writing
sucks and the acting isn't much better... but it's a hell of a lot better
than Driven was! The race scenes are also more exciting (I guess because
they're half realistic) but the 10 second drag races that last 3 minutes
get a little tired towards the end.
The surprises: We all enjoyed it much more than we were expecting! I
think that's largely because Driven was just so bad. This movie is fun
and the cars are cool. And attainable I think adds a little. Some of us
even recognized a few of the cars from the magazines, shows or street
races. What surprised me most was the lack of obvious product placement.
For example, the hot tire is the "Mushimoto HZ"... you would have figured
Nitto or BFG could have ponied up some cash to get them to rave about it
being the hot tire! Another surprise, people weren't laughing as much as
they were at Driven (except our group).
The nitpicks: When watching this movie, watch out for:
Nitrous increasing your max top-end speed w/o changing gear ratios
The old, "downshift and floor it" trick still works, but in this movie you
have to hit the nitrous button as well! If you run out of nitrous, hit
the other button!
The eclipse has an airscoop... on the top of the roof???
The eclipse has 6 speeds in one of the chase scenes. Count them!
You have time to adjust your fuel/ignition 3d map curves while drag racing
People are betting tons of money and not a one of them is using drag or
race slicks!
Along with that idea, they're also carrying around hundreds of pounds of
stereo equipment and body kits.
People keep their expensive race cars in easy to break into, non-alarmed
buildings... as well as stacks of legit paid for DVD players and VCRs
Several hundred import car folks can leave a parking lot quickly without
acting like idiots (in real life, leaving the garage was scary as every
idiot in their Civic thought they were cool and wanted to race)
There is an organized drag racing event "out in the desert" at some Air
Force Base... ya, like that would ever happen! They've had problems
sanctioning real races at drag strips!
People bet $2000 without even checking out what the other person has on
their car.
Two bottles of nitrous always gives more power than one!
You can run your nitrous till your engine blows up, then your car still
keeps on running, and then when you get attacked by guns your nitrous
bottles will still have enough left in them to make your car explode.
A fully modified TwinTurbo Supra with Nitrous is not much faster than a
stock Ferrari F355.
There is apparently very little traffic in LA... enough to block of a
majore street for a few minutes in order to have a street race, and the
Highways outside LA don't have anyone on them at all!
I could go on and on and on... and in fact when the DVD comes out it might
be fun to write them all down, but just go enjoy the movie!
The lesson: I hate quote Dennis Grant, but he said in a post that this
Import thing is _HUGE_ and if we could even tap a tiny percentage of it
we would be doing well. He's absolutely right, I've been in "the scene"
since I bought my Integra 6 years ago now and I've watched it grow. Every
person in that theater could/should be interested in autocross. I don't
want to start a debate about whether we want them, or whether we could
even possibly handle them all... but it's ignorant to ignore them.
Conclusion: Yes it's worth the $7.50 or $27 ticket or whatever it is
these days. Getting in for free a week and a half early was just the
icing on the cake! I think every import car or race fan should go see
this movie.
--Darren
p.s. Does anyone want to explain to me those streetracing.org T-Shirts
that read "Street Racing is not a crime"??? Uh, yes it is! Perhaps the
T-Shirts should say "If you're going to make Street Racing a Crime, why
not give us a place to do it legally". Maybe I'm just getting old?
|